Sample email: Alltricks

Well, if you're surprised by this choice, I am too. I'm not a big fan of promotional or e-commerce emails. I have a weakness for editorial newsletter design or transactional emails. However, product communication is a reality that we cannot deny.

Let me give you some background

As is often the case when I have an idea in my head, I don't have it anywhere else. Totally monomaniacal. And my current fad is electric bikes.

Yes, I only have a converted van as my daily means of transport, and that's a bit too much. I've also got a "normal" bike (I've discovered that it's now appropriate to say "muscular"). Except that I live in the middle of nowhere, in the beautiful south-western countryside not too far from the cliffs of the Lot. A lifestyle that suits me perfectly. The only limitation, if I may say so, is that the public transport network is quite limited and that the first sign of life where I can buy something to feed myself on a daily basis is more than 10 kilometers away.

Anyway, I'll stop justifying myself and telling you my life story: I'm getting older as a result. I'm looking for an electric bike and I don't know anything about it..

Before making a purchase, I start by getting informed. And in this game, I like to cross-reference sources of information: specialized media, general sellers, brands and manufacturers... and to do it right, I subscribe to their newsletter if they have one. Spoiler, they all have them, and they're not all the same!

In this case, we have an advertiser who is a multi-brand e-commerce site and who defines himself as follows:

"Specialist in cycling, running and outdoor equipment 100% French "

What's so special about this mail?

At first glance, not much actually.
I even came close to deleting it rather quickly.

In fact, its content has, a priori, very little interest in my quest.

I opened it for two reasons:

• is the first mail that I received from them after the "welcome" one, and I wanted to know what they had to "tell" me.
• the object-induced curiosity "e-bike excellence

Even if I'm not looking for a moped to make podiums, I'm curious to know what makes it possible to award such a prize to a bike.

Newsletter and e-commerce

At the opening, I can see Alltricks' identity markers.. Having visited the site several times, I'm not disoriented.

On the contrary, I'm pleasantly surprised. And that's what really caught my attention about this email. For once, I even find the email more qualitative than the site.. Yes, yes, it's possible!

There's a simple reason for this: it's not a promotional email, but a product-oriented newsletter.

So there's no question of using the same levers as many e-commerce companies.
Levers that turn any e-mail into a Christmas eve display: new products, top sales, promo codes, free delivery tomorrow, customer reviews...

What I'm describing here is precisely what I could see on the site but couldn't find in the email. Hence the difference in design quality I felt when I opened the email.

Designing for brand identity

• Branding that's a little more upscale (premium) than on the site, with a ultra-simple header focused on the brand and its core business as a baseline.
• Beautiful ambient visuals showing products in action (not studio shot packs), all with a oblique cuts with transparency bring rhythm and singularity with less effort, beautiful! Important note: the images are the right size and, above all, compressed and cleaned of useless metadata (yes, I checked), which is rare.
• From the visual hierarchy by section and easily identifiable contrasting title levels.
• Two action buttons(I'll come back to that later, because there's bound to be a wolf).
• Short, readable, self-explanatory titles. Accompanied by well-written paragraphs of text, left-ironed (thank you!) and a few emoji that punctuate without abuse (because yes, at the end of a sentence it's always better for accessibility).
• As far as typography is concerned, depending on your opening environment, you'll be able to see some nice work that also affirms the desire for a more qualitative positioning with two Google fonts. One for titles (Overpass) and one for the current text (Inter). This is all the more surprising since this is not the case on the site, which uses only one and not the same one (Roboto).
• From staggered content sectionsIt's already very effective when it's done "simply", except that here the choice is made not to have 50/50 columns. There's slightly more room for visuals accentuating the rhythm with an overflowing effect. Good point.
• Talking about content and different sections, the rhythm generated by high margins is really appreciable and comfortable. At last, an advertiser who's not afraid of a vacuum ! The eye wanders and hangs on naturally. It's not oppressive or hollow, it's just well done.
• The email closing block with a sympathetic signature proof of editorial work on the advertiser's brand territory and its rough edges:

"You deserve the best, even if you're not (yet)".

With all this, Alltricks already ticks a lot of the boxes of a neat email template and a nice job on content.

The devil is in the detail

In this case, this ready-made phrase can take on both meanings.

Where they managed to catch me in my own trap (that of the guy who positions himself with a critical eye on an email) was when I opened the email on mobile (Apple, it's important to point that out). Surprise, and not the least, the cover is not just a photo but a video without auto-play (thank you). WOW, ok I already told you that I'm not a fan of wow effects in emailsbut I must admit I didn't see that coming. The video is hosted by them on a CDN and the fallback is very clean and without unnecessary technology. Well done.

After that, we can quickly return to more strategic considerations of "why". Why host a 10-second video with no sound, in which we catch a fleeting glimpse of the bike in question? Clearly, it doesn't provide much information, and once again... it will only really work on Apple iOS mobile opening environments.

Possible areas for improvement

The time spent resizing the video, hosting it and integrating it into the email could have been used to correct elements that concern more targeted subscribers.

• A little formatting on attribute alt for branding in the header, which is text in images (ouch)

• We have some nice, explicit links in the footer for a preference center and a help form, but in light grey on a white background and in 11px, no really, it's not nice. to do this kind of thing. Place the desabo link in the header? See the Manage your preferences link.
• A fully clickable email crea for a newsletter in 2024. No, that's not serious. Review the purpose of this type of campaign and the point of doing this kind of thing. You're making the code more cumbersome, and you can cause "false" clicks on mobile with the touch and subscribers who only try to scroll to read.
• The sender. Or rather, the sender. Yes, e-mail personalization can be very effective when it's aimed at your subscribers. But here, the personification of a service certainly made up of several people by one and the same "Clémentine", it's easy to have doubts about her real existence. And the icing on the cake (from Groupama) is that it does a disservice to inbox recognition and brand awareness. The sender is truncated: "Clémentine d'Alltri." Simple is good too.

And by the way, Alltricks hasn't implemented BIMI and that could be a nice plus.

• The preheader. Then I missed it completely. On the one hand this preheader introduces a different idea of the object instead of completing itBut it's also too oriented and requires a deeper knowledge of the sport (DH mountain biking) and competition. The whole thing, object and preheader, is once again too long and therefore truncated. In short, I don't like it at all.

• Finally, and this is related to the preheader, the contents and organization of the mail. After a closer reading, I understood who Loris Vergier was and why I was being told about him. Personally, I wouldn't have put the second "cover" block after the real cover introducing the main topic. I'd have gone straight on to the second topic and proposed the brands of equipment to do as champion Loris Vergier does. By transforming this "double cover" into a two-column zigzag block, we once again have an odd number and the rhythm is preserved. Would you like me to show you?

Okay, the image isn't quite right, but you get the idea. Another option would have been to place this closing block after the zigzag blocks, but not two covers one under the other.

Finally, out of nowhere, we find a block of reassurance. I confess I don't understand. I have the impression that it's a fixed element of the template. It's there because that's what an Alltricks footer is. However, since the email isn't directly oriented towards the act of buying, why pull out the classic: deliveries, returns, payment and customer service?

I would have seen a reminder of Alltricks' positioning and values. It's time to roll out the brand posture.

On that note, I'll leave you to it, I still have about twenty electric bike mails to open and above all a bike to find 🙂